Updated on June 15, 2017 at 12:24 PMPosted on June 15, 2017 at 10:01 AM

The captivated students enjoying Robin Echols-Cooper's story-telling skills in a Cleveland pre-kindergarten class in 2014 are an example of the high-quality preschool education Cleveland is trying to achieve through the school district's PRE4CLE program. Brent Larkin writes that efforts to improve preschool access and quality statewide is being impeded by Gov. Kasich's tax cuts and misplaced budget priorities in Columbus.

The captivated students enjoying Robin Echols-Cooper's story-telling skills in a Cleveland pre-kindergarten class in 2014 are an example of the high-quality preschool education Cleveland is trying to achieve through the school district's PRE4CLE program. Brent Larkin writes that efforts to improve preschool access and quality statewide is being impeded by Gov. Kasich's tax cuts and misplaced budget priorities in Columbus. (Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer, File, 2014)

CLEVELAND -- Hide the children. Ohio's legislators need a scapegoat. And in this state, when the going gets tough, the kids get punished.

Sometime between now and June 30, it'll happen again.

Whenever legislators find themselves in a budget bind, they invariably take it out on the state's most vulnerable and precious assets, the ones too young to vote.

With tax revenues in a free fall, the Ohio General Assembly and Gov. John Kasich need to compensate for a multibillion-dollar mistake largely of their own making by inflicting pain on the people they're supposed to serve, not betray.

Like cornered rats, their way out will be to shortchange kids. So they'll essentially flat-fund most school districts, while slashing support for others, ignoring yet again that "thorough and efficient" system of schools requirement in Article VI of the Ohio Constitution.

Worse, they will perpetuate Ohio's ongoing pattern of shamefully underinvesting in preschool programs.

No matter that science is now conclusive, that these same investments can prevent the brain of a young child from being permanently scarred by a life of abject poverty.

Ohio ranks a pathetic 33rd in the nation in providing four-years-olds access to preschool, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.

Nevertheless, the next two-year state budget approved by the House, now awaiting Senate passage, reduces funding on early-childhood programs by more than $7.5 million. And it fails to correct a funding formula inequity that deprives at-risk kids in 38 counties - including Cuyahoga, Stark, Wayne, Portage, Lake, Huron and Trumbull counties - of another $11 million.

Any Northeast Ohio legislator, Democrat or Republican, who votes for a bill that doesn't restore this funding doesn't deserve to hold elected office.

Former state Sen. Shannon Jones, a superstar in the world of child advocacy and now executive director of Groundwork Ohio, a group devoted to promoting issues related to child care and early education, gently reminded the Senate Finance Committee of the "slow progress" the state has made in providing quality early childhood education for at-risk children.

"The evidence is overwhelming that brains are built by early experiences, " said Jones.

"By age three, low-income learners have heard an average of 30 million fewer words than their high-income peers and their vocabulary is half as large. Kids who start behind often stay behind," Jones added.

How is it a state that spent the past six years awash in tax revenue now lacks the money to make life-changing investments in a child's future?

The answer involves a misjudgment so egregious that if it happened in the private sector everyone involved would pay with their jobs.

Six years ago, instead of balancing tax cuts with massive investments in the future, Kasich and his legislative conspirators began engineering what now total $5 billion in tax cuts.

In fact, there's now a growing view around the Statehouse that self-dealing legislative leaders may have intentionally enacted a bad bill because it enriches their private business interests.

Here's the promise Kasich and the Republican-run legislature made to Ohioans when they enacted unprecedented tax cuts: The revenue we return to you will more than pay for itself with the explosion of economic growth and job creation that is 100 percent certain to follow.

Here's what really followed:

*Job growth in Ohio that has trailed the national average for a record-setting 53 consecutive months. When, in 2016, the tax cuts were fully implemented, Ohio ranked a pathetic 36th in the nation in job growth.